


i keep the static on the radio

by nuricurry



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: A man can love multiple people, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:15:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24315652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuricurry/pseuds/nuricurry
Summary: Love, it’s a horrible, dangerous thing. Because love, it doesn’t do anything but make him wish he was someone else.  Someone who loving didn’t come with casualties, someone who could love someone, and not have it destroy them.
Relationships: Lunafreya Nox Fleuret/Noctis Lucis Caelum, Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	i keep the static on the radio

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gravy_tape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravy_tape/gifts).



It’s the first time he’s seen her in nearly twelve years and the first thought that crosses his mind is _oh, I forgot how light her eyelashes are._

It’s a nonsensical thought, pointless, and quickly followed by others, more reasonable and expected ones like _can she see me from here?_ and _god I hope she’s okay_. But his first thought was about her blonde eyelashes, and how they turn almost translucent in the light, how they make her eyes look more blue, just because of the stark comparison.

Thinking about her eyelashes makes him realize just how long it has been since he’s seen her.

He’s watched her interviews on television, he’s looked through magazine articles with photoshoots inside the palace of Tenebrae, Luna seated at her desk, legs crossed, hands folded, all prim and proper. He’s heard her speeches on the radio, talking about the Six and Light and healing. He’s heard her voice change over time, the high, lilting voice of an adolescent becoming something soft and soothing, always a little breathy due to her accent. He’s _seen_ her, he’s heard her, he’s even written to her for a decade and change, but it’s different from looking at her across a crowded plaza, breathing the same air, and knowing that their eyes would meet, and wondering what she’s thinking when they do.

 _Oh,_ he thinks later as he’s running, tearing through Imperial soldiers as he tries to reach the altar, as he tries to get to her in time, _I’m really in love with her._

That’s something he’s thought about a lot, during this journey. Something that has been on his mind since he left Insomnia, something that has lingered in the fringed edges of his subconscious since much longer than that. He loves Luna, that’s never been a question for him. He’s loved her for as long as he’s known that he could love someone, for as long as he knew the word to describe that feeling in his chest. Since he met her when he was seven, and she was very patient and very kind when he was feeling anything but. Since the moment his father brought him to Tenebrae, indignant and broken because life was so cruel to him and he did not understand why. When everyone was too busy pitying him, Luna smiled at him, brought him into her room and read him books, and when he asked her things she’d answer them, and he was so used to no one doing that for him. ‘You’ll learn when you’re older,’ that was what was always said. But not by Luna, not when she would kneel by his wheelchair and tell him about the Six and about stars and the sea of magic that coursed through his blood. 

“You’re the Light,” she told him, and even when he didn’t believe her, he wanted to. He wanted everything she said, even the impossible things, to be true, “You will bring the light back to our star.”

But love can mean a lot of things. There’s a lot of ways to love, just like there’s a lot of people in his life who he does love. And he’s never known how to define that love he feels for Luna, because by the time he’s realized it’s there, she really...wasn’t.

All he has in the notebook, and years of writing and years of mementos that can be tucked between pages. He hasn’t seen her, hasn’t touched her, hasn’t even spoken to her, not really, not since the day that Tenebrae was taken and she let herself be taken with it, while his father ran, because while Luna could be spared, Noctis wouldn’t be.

He looked through that notebook, the night before the plaza. He looked through the years, the progression of his scrawled, childhood handwriting into the barely legible scratch he developed as a teenager forced to complete tests and compose essays. He looked at Luna’s notes, always so elegantly penned, even when she was half the age she was now, all neat little swoops and swirls and a well-practiced signature of _Lunafreya_ that some people would probably pay him to have. He read the passages, the mentions of school work and lessons, and boring exercises he had to do with Gladio when he really didn’t want to. He read Luna talking about her dreams, the ones she can’t share with anyone else because she’s the Oracle and for her to think about anything else would be to turn her back on an entire continent that needs her, and she’d never be selfish enough to do that. 

He read the way she always signed off on all her letters, the parting words she never failed to send him.

_With all my love,  
Luna_

He knows he loves her, but he loves his father and he wouldn’t want to marry him. He loves Gladio, and Prompto, and Iris, but it’s different from how he loves Luna. He loves Ignis, but that’s something else entirely, that’s something that he doesn’t like to think on too much at all, because it’s complicated and messy and if Noct is one thing it’s reluctant to deal with anything complicated and messy. And loving Luna, it feels a lot like that, but he also feels like he has to think about it sometime because he’s supposed to marry her and he doesn’t hate it, he is actually happy with it, but he also doesn’t know how to love someone and also be married to them and understand what all of that means in the context of who he is and what he’s supposed to be doing and now his father is dead and his kingdom is ash and everything just feels wrong.

When he’s running towards the altar, and he thinks of Luna and the notebook and her blonde eyelashes and the way he wishes he was strong enough to be everything she needed, everything she promised him that he would be, he realizes he’s in love with her.

But it isn’t enough.

The roar of the Hydrean still rattles around in his head when he wakes up the next morning. He still feels like he’s eight years old again, young, and weak, and helpless, fighting to swim in a sea that is swallowing him whole while Luna watches on and knows he can’t save her. 

He wakes up and everything has fallen apart and all he wants to do is fall back asleep.

Ignis is there because of course Ignis is there. Ignis is like a stone, hard and ever present, unyielding to any of Noctis’ storms. He persists, he never changes, no matter how hard Noctis beats himself against him, over and over again. Noctis can’t wear him down, can’t erode Ignis, no matter how hard he tries, and he hates that he needs that, because he knows it isn’t fair. Ignis should be able to break too.

“Just allow me to remain beside you.”

How can he ask that, after all that’s been done? How can Noctis deny him, after all this time?

 _Oh_ , he thinks, when he wakes up, and Ignis has fallen asleep sitting in the chair beside his bed, eyes still bandaged, hands still torn and nails crusted in blood from the fight he was in, _He’s in love with me, and I’ve nearly killed him_. 

And love, it’s a horrible, dangerous thing. Because love, it doesn’t do anything but make him wish he was someone else. Someone who could do things, someone who could offer more than violence and sacrifice and death. Someone who loving didn’t come with casualties, someone who could love someone, and not have it destroy them.

He lost his father. He lost Luna. He couldn’t lose Ignis as well.

Ignis, who he knew for as far back as he could remember. Ignis, who only ever let him hold his hands. Ignis, who told him when he was being unreasonable, but also Ignis, who came to his defense when others pushed expectations upon him that simply weren’t fair. 

Has he always had that mole on his lip? Noctis wonders while he’s staring at Ignis as he sleeps, because it’s easier to think about those things, than it is to think about the scars on Ignis’ temples, and the fact that the doctors say that his chances of seeing have fallen below seventeen-percent.

He’s selfish, and unkind, and childish to boot, because after Altissa, he can’t sleep alone. He asks Ignis to sleep beside him, because he knows he’ll never say no. He never says no because he loves Noctis too, and it’s nearly killed him twice, and it’ll probably kill him again, because all Noctis is good at is hurting the people who are too good for him.

Ignis doesn’t sleep when he lays beside him, but Noctis does. He sleeps hard, and long, and deep, and he dreams about waves and flowers and Ignis’ eyes, clouded over and sightless and all his fault. 

_Will you kill me, before I kill you?_ he thinks about asking, in the darkness of the night, as the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer and Ignis’ eyes never recover. 

“Do you miss it?” he asks instead, his back to Ignis, his eyes closed, maybe trying to capture even a glimpse of what Ignis’ world is like now, without the ability to see anything. “The light,” he clarifies.

“No,” Ignis says, soft and low beside his ear. His accent is like Luna’s, like what Noctis remembers hearing on the radio and the television, but his voice is deeper, his words slurred with exhaustion and the need to sleep, “I can still see it.”

And Noctis finds himself thinking _oh, I’m in love with him too._


End file.
